


No More Kisses

by Fantasyenabler



Category: Marvel, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: 1000-3000 words, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-11
Updated: 2010-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:36:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasyenabler/pseuds/Fantasyenabler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After what happened with Mystique, Bobby's through with kissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> [ Kissing Meme ](http://caia-comica.livejournal.com/73520.html)offspring which turned out to be too much of a monster to be comment fic. Not a sequel to my previous Bobby/Sam fic, "Dumber Than a Sack of Hair." (I want to see how the Marauder storyline plays out before I write a sequel.) Also, _X-Men_ 201 may joss all of this, but I won't care if you don't.

Bobby Drake was never kissing anyone again.

Moments after the last of the Marauders had been packed off to Val Cooper, Mystique still sporting the two black eyes Rogue had given her, Bobby had walked out to the backyard of Rogue's Mississippi childhood home and worded a long-overdue pledge to himself.

_No more kissing._

No more getting his hopes up. No more letting his guard down.

No more finding out people weren't what he thought they were, and—this was the kicker, he felt—no more watching his friends nearly getting killed by a lover's attack, be it Mystique's gun or Infectia's kiss.

He was done. Finished. Game Over, ended on account of stupidity, or perhaps just sheer blind thickheadedness. It didn't really matter. The final result was the same.

After all, he'd known better with Mystique. For weeks, he'd managed to keep her at arms' length, only to give in at the last, worst moment. It was her line about being warm under the cold that had hooked him, he thought, more than her asking him to "pretend." He'd already decided by that point. He was just waiting for the right opportunity to make a fool of himself.

So, he would end up with a frozen heart after all. It would be worth it though. Glaciers didn't cry, except when they melted, and he wasn't planning on melting again for anyone.

No matter how warm they acted.

*********************************************

Sam Guthrie wanted to punch someone.

He still could not believe how badly his team had been caught off guard by the pair of vipers nesting on their roster. Mystique and Lady Mastermind…the idea made him want to shake his head and pretend it'd never happened, that he and the others hadn't been betrayed and hurt so easily. The reality…it was just so damn disheartening to accept as true.

If it was hard for him, he could only imagine how hard it was for the woman who'd brought them both onboard. Rogue had ended up catching the worst of the fallout, and it was going to take her a good long while to bounce back, both emotionally and physically. Sam had faith she'd recover though. His team leader possessed a toughness Sam recognized and admired, the kind that came from years of struggle and never gave way, not even when it might be considered the wise thing to do. He wouldn't worry about her; he'd watch over her and do his best to help, but not worry. She didn't need it and most likely wouldn't thank him for it if he were stupid enough to try.

More likely, she'd want him to worry about the _other_ person Mystique had royally screwed over. Even if Sam wasn't precisely sure what had happened there, and held only the slightest suspicions in his grasp. Hence, he did what any good soldier would do in the face of a lack of information.

He watched. He watched as Bobby slipped away from the group in the wrecked antebellum home and headed out towards the furthest reaches of the overgrown backyard. He watched, silent as a shadow in the open back doorway, while Bobby paced, hands moving slightly in front of him, like a man either haranguing himself, arguing with himself, or possibly both.

He watched, because just as he had over the last few weeks of their working together again, he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say to Bobby. He only knew that he didn't want to screw it up. It was the type of situation that couldn't begin to be fixed once it was good and broken.

Even if right now he hadn't been the one to do the breaking.

He had to admit that he felt sort of resentful about that. He hoped Mystique's face took a long time to heal.

A good long time.

"What do you want, Sam?" He realized that Bobby'd stopped pacing and was glaring right at Sam's patch of shadow. "Did Hank or Scott send you searching for me?"

A _damn_ good long time. "No," he said, straightening up and stepping into the yard proper. "I just saw you sneak out. Thought I'd check and see if you'd found anything more interesting back here than a couple of magnolia trees and an invading army of kudzu vines." He reached up and pulled a waxy leaf off a low-hanging branch, crushing it in his fist.

Bobby shook his head and looked down and around, grimacing as if he hadn't noticed the wildness overtaking the yard before. He shook his head again at the mess. "I decided that I needed some air," he said, shifting in place and crossing his arms across his chest.

Sam let the pulped leaf fall to the ground. "Yeah, I can understand that." He focused in on Bobby's downturned face and took a deep breath, slowly letting it out before forging onward. "This whole situation…I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I can't quite figure out how we all managed to get taken in so completely."

Bobby sighed, still looking downward. "It's not that much of a mystery," he said, speaking almost too quietly for Sam to hear him properly. "We got taken in because we wanted to. We ignored anything that might have tipped us off. We didn't see it because we didn't want to see it. End of story."

Sam paused, considering this opening. "You really think that?" he asked, carefully closing the distance between them.

"I do," Bobby said, turning away from Sam, but not moving off. "I think we were stupid, but I also think we wanted to be stupid." He grimaced, shuffling a bit so that Sam could easily see the disgusted twist to his mouth. "We should probably be more worried about that than the actual stupidity. We want to trust people so badly…" His head lifted, and he stared through the branches of a nearby tree without truly seeing them. "It's a mistake. It's what got us here, fucked six ways to Sunday and lucky to be alive. The only thing that should really be surprising is that it didn't all end up much worse than it was."

Sam found that he couldn't disagree with any of that. "Yeah, I see what you're saying," he said, as he drew a little nearer to Bobby's side. "We did make a mistake, wanting to believe in those two."

He stopped, feeling the edge of a large rock press into his boot. Cautiously, he stepped over it and moved forward again. "But it wasn't fatal. We got past it." He searched Bobby's face, watching for a reaction. "Maybe it's just a matter of taking things more slowly, not jumping into trusting relationships the way we did here. Maybe, so long as we do that, we won't get burned as awfully as we did this time."

He halted when Bobby's left shoulder was only an inch or two away. Close enough that if Bobby were anyone else, Sam would be able to feel the warmth coming off his skin. "It doesn't necessarily have to continue being a bad idea," he said, wondering what Bobby could feel coming off of him. "More like something that you have to wait on. With the thought that if you put enough into it, it has to pay off eventually."

Bobby shifted, and Sam held his breath, waiting for whatever would happen next. He was surprised when there was no movement, on either of their parts, just Bobby saying, "I'm not so sure that it does."

"I am," and he was. He was extremely sure of it as he leaned in and slid his fingers across the side of Bobby's cheek and neck. He was sure of it as he eased Bobby around to face him, and he was damn sure of it when he bent down and brushed his dry lips across Bobby's cold ones. So sure that he didn't stop at brushing. Rather, he pressed in more firmly, more deeply, until his entire body was totally centered, arms wrapped around, hands rubbing across, every piece of him wanting a part of this chance taken.

All the more because he knew it couldn't last, couldn't be anything other than short and bittersweet, couldn't be what he wanted, not yet anyway.

Sam shrugged to himself, even as he pulled his body back.

His heart knew that he still hadn't put in enough time.

******************************************************

Bobby gasped as Sam stepped away from him. "What the…?" he asked, or at least he thought he tried to ask. He wasn't really certain. Sam had given him back his space, but it felt like he'd taken some of the air with him.

Specifically the air Bobby needed to keep his brain firing and crackling and thinking properly. Or at the very least, thinking on a Bobby-Basic kind of level.

Sam had also taken the warmth, but that didn't bother Bobby as much. As far as he could tell, that was always happening to him these days.

He decided to give talking another try. "What the hell was that?" he asked, somewhat relieved to hear something that sounded like a complete sentence come out that time, even if it was a bit shaky.

He felt even shakier when Sam shrugged at him. "A step," Sam said. "One that had to be taken, one that couldn't wait."

Bobby shook his head. Was that supposed to be an explanation? It wasn't, at least not in any language Bobby knew. He tried asking another question. "Why?"

Sam smiled and began to turn away. "Because you were in danger of not wanting to walk anymore." He grinned at Bobby over his shoulder, and Bobby knew just from that look that he had to have the world's most poleaxed expression on his own face. "Don't worry," Sam said. "I know it's too soon for it to make any sense. Just…take some time and think about it. I can wait."

He was nearly to the house when he stopped and added, "I'm good at waiting," pausing a breath inside that same patch of shadow he'd been hiding in earlier, before opening the door and heading back inside.

The door barely thudded against the frame as it closed behind him.

"The hell?" Bobby asked the space Sam had left vacant. He still wasn't sure exactly what had happened here. No, definitely not sure. Not sure at all.

He did know one thing though, as he slowly raised a hand to his mouth, tracing over the places that Sam's skin had touched, tracking that slight sense of pressure that'd lingered on his lips.

He needed a new vow. The old one was already hopelessly broken.

It only took him a few seconds to settle on a fresh one.

_Wait and see._

Fin.


End file.
